Along with the rapid development of wireless communication, mobile communication devices have become an indispensable part of modern life. With the introduction of the Global System for Mobile (GSM) communication and the Personal Communications System (PCS), mobile subscribers are provided with a number of advanced subscriber features and applications. Using a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card attached to a mobile communication device, the GSM system directs a user's incoming calls to the mobile communication device. The SIM card is a user replacement module for used by a commercial entity providing a network to ensure that the mobile communication device is connected to the commercial entity's network. The user can change mobile apparatuses simply by moving the SIM card from a mobile apparatus to another.
The most important information stored in a SIM card comprising the subscriber's identification information, such as the subscriber's phone number, user code, personal identity code (PIC), security code, etc., needed by the mobile system to identify, authenticate and locate a mobile subscriber will be contained into a dedicated module. A mobile subscriber is also able to store necessary personal information, for example short messages, subscriber's private phone book, schedules, and other user-selectable information, in the memory unit of a detachable SIM card and freely associates it with any available mobile apparatus.
With the increasing demand for wireless communication services and the decreasing of mobile apparatus price, users prone to upgrade their mobile apparatuses more and more frequently and owning several mobile apparatuses at the same time is not uncommon anymore. Therefore, by inserting the original SIM card of a replaced apparatus into another mobile apparatus, the stored subscriber information in the inserted SIM card is available to the newly utilized mobile terminal. As a result, the mobile subscriber is able to freely utilize any available mobile apparatus while maintaining the same subscriber feature data.
However, mobile subscribers may want to replace the original SIM card yet preserve and transfer the stored data into a new SIM card or to share stored data among all possessed mobile apparatuses. Therefore, how to easily duplicate data from the replaced SIM card into the new one, or to share information among various mobile apparatuses has becoming an increasing need of mobile communication users.
On the other hand, it is not an uncommon situation for a subscriber to accidentally lose a mobile apparatus. The information stored in the SIM card, which may contain important business or personal information, is also lost along with the lost mobile apparatus. One effective solution is to update and backup the data stored in the SIM card regularly, a function unfulfilled by any current mobile apparatus or related device.